WSJ: Greenwich man leading Xerox push was weighed as CEO

Former Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson on Jan. 4, 2017, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (File photo via Xerox)

Former Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson on Jan. 4, 2017, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (File photo via Xerox)

Photo: /

Photo: /

Image
1of/3

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 3

Former Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson on Jan. 4, 2017, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (File photo via Xerox)

Former Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson on Jan. 4, 2017, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (File photo via Xerox)

Photo: /

WSJ: Greenwich man leading Xerox push was weighed as CEO

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

The board of Xerox considered replacing its CEO last November with a Greenwich resident who was subsequently hired by billionaire investor Carl Icahn to lead an investor proxy battle against the Norwalk-based technology company, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citing unnamed multiple unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported the Xerox board had eyed John Visentin as a possible successor to Jeff Jacobson, who was installed as CEO in January 2017 as the replacement for Ursula Burns, as Xerox spun off its business process outsourcing arm as Conduent.

Jacobson would subsequently reach a buyout deal with Fujifilm Holdings of Japan, with the deal having yet to be completed and coming under pressure by Xerox investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, the latter having acquired his shares in Xerox’s 2010 acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services through which Xerox had bolstered its business process outsourcing.

In March, Icahn and Deason retained Visentin to coordinate their campaign to recruit other investors in an effort to block the Fujifilm merger by securing seats on the Xerox board, which is chaired by Bob Keegan, the former CEO of Goodyear Tire & Rubber who worked for Eastman Kodak earlier in his career, as the case with Jacobson.

Xerox had previously disclosed its board had considered replacing Jacobson last year on an “unclear” outlook in its words as to whether the company would hit financial goals it had set. A Xerox spokesperson did not state whether the company’s board had considered Visentin as a possible CEO, in response to a Hearst Connecticut Media query, while forwarding a Keegan statement that the Deason lawsuit “distorts many of the facts” and defending the process through which Xerox reached the Fujifilm deal that would create dual headquarters in Norwalk and Tokyo, with Jacobson remaining CEO.

Visentin has been running a consulting firm from his Greenwich home. Most recently he led Novitex, the Stamford-based outsourced document services company created by Pitney Bowes that was subsequently merged with Exela Technologies, with the combined company now based in Irving, Texas.

Visentin previously worked as a senior executive with Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM and before that HP, a major Xerox rival for office and home printers and other document technologies.

Jacobson lives a mile from the Greenwich line in Purchase, N.Y., and has a corporate connection to Greenwich as well, having moved the headquarters there of the offset printing equipment manufacturer Presstek from New Hampshire, after being named CEO in 2007. Jacobson joined Xerox in 2012 on the eve of a private equity firm acquiring Presstek and moving its head office back to New Hampshire.